Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

XVII CULTURAL EVOLUTION

So far, we have been concerned only with biological evolution.However, organisms, to be more precise, animals also exhibit a number of adaptive traits, especially patterns of behavior that did not arise through biological evolution, but rather through cultural evolution.Cultural evolution differs from biological evolution in a great many respects and thus also the traits that emerge during it frequently have a character that substantially differs from the traits and patterns of behavior emerging during biological evolution.The fraction of the traits that emerged and became fixed in animals through cultural evolution is not very large (this is probably not true for humans).Nonetheless, a separate chapter is usually devoted to this subject in textbooks.Comparison of the laws governing cultural and biological evolution better emphasizes important characteristics of biological evolution.

The classical Darwinian theory of evolution can explain the evolution of adaptive traits only in asexual organisms. The frozen plasticity theory is much more general: It can also explain the origin and evolution of adaptive traits in both asexual and sexual organisms Read more